Today in CE9 we did an activity called “Word Choice: Great Verbs, Going Beyond the Ordinary.” This activity incorporates language that the author of Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson, uses to conjure up images and feelings. Students were asked to locate words that served as verbs that evoked a sound or a touch/movement. They did well with this, but did less well with the part of the activity where they were asked to come up with their own. I expected some students to be more creative than what they were, but at least they know what verbs are…and hopefully appreciate Anderson’s artistic, creative word choice.
In English 11, we did round 2 of sentence fragments for a mini-lesson. My goal by bringing it back was to see increased improvement in their ability to locate sentence fragments and then correct them, as the results from last week were just okay. The good news is, things went better this time. The students seemed to understand it more, and did fairly well on a five question quiz. The only bias on this quiz is that I just reworded sentences that they have seen before, hoping that they would make the right corrections to them because they’ve seen those types of fragments more than once.
Mr. Sabol came in to watch my 7th hour (Eng. 11). Unfortunately, I passed out the assignment before doing my pre-activity assessment and explanations, so it was difficult to get the students to pay attention. This is something that I always try to remember, so I am disappointed that I did it when my principal was observing me. Despite that downfall, I think the class went pretty well, and I never lost control of them. I was able to walk around and help them, and then at the end of class, I was able to talk and connect with them with a few minutes left if they were done with everything. I’d like him to come in a couple more times before I leave. Their Crucible packets were due today, so they were busy finishing those up and asking questions. Most of them came in on time.
